And he had it now.
But what? What was it?
Delphie took a breath, was about to say something.
He held up his hand to stop her. He needed to think. To think. He narrowed his eyes and looked across the channel, the white slopes of the coast freckled with the green stubs of trees and shrubs tortured by the weather.
And then it started to trickle back, to take shape.
A view.
Everything in plain view.
And a taunt.
Here it is. Right in front of you.
Like Clem’s doorstop.
Like the bookmarks.
Everything there if you knew how to look, where to look, what to look for.
Everything in plain view, he thought again.
In plain view.
Right in front of you.
But there was nothing: just a wide stretch of bare ground made up of hard-packed, sun-baked earth and the polished rumps of stones set deeply into it. And all around them nothing but the stone footings of four walls, just a few low segments of plastered brick no more than two or three courses high to mark out the shape of four long-gone doorways – the ones to his left and right leading to the cells, the one behind him leading to the wells, and the one in front of him with the channel and mainland beyond. High walls once, but now just low bookend stumps of worn brick and plaster.
In plain view. In plain view.
He’d been looking right at it since he’d sat down.
Now he flung his cigarette aside, jumped up and snatched the GPS handset from Delphie.
‘What are you doing? What on earth …?’ she called after him.
But he didn’t reply. Instead he hurried over to the gap in the wall footings in front of them and checked the GPS reading. The co-ordinates flickered but they still matched. Then he took a few steps through the doorway and checked the numbers again. The same erratic flickering, and still the same co-ordinates. Then he went back to the footings and straddled what was left of the wall, one foot either side of the ledge, and took a third reading.
For the first time, the numbers glowed bright and steady.
‘This is the place,’ he said, and pocketing the handset he dropped down on his knees to look more closely at the rough brickwork, some of it still covered in a brown crépi plaster.
Then he sat back on his haunches, looked at Delphie, and pointed at it.
And started to laugh.
Like a lot of the walls they’d seen – what was left of them – graffiti had been sprayed on to every spare centimetre of stone: names of pop groups, people, initials, declarations of love. The usual things …
And there, on that small patch of plaster, no more than a dozen centimetres high and twice as long, in a light blue spray, no attempt at artistry, a single word.
Just five letters.
VOILÀ.
Philo’s little joke.
‘Bring me the torch,’ said Jacquot, as he leaned forward to examine what remained of the wall, brushing his fingers over it, then getting up to step across it, looking at it from the other side, then pushing at it with his foot. Rock hard. No give. By the time he’d walked around it a couple of times, Delphie was there with the torch.
Jacquot took it – a solid, metal-cased Maglite – and squatted down again, tapping the torch’s back-end against the stone, little bits of plaster and brick dust settling on his wrist as he did so.
How would Philo have done it, Jacquot wondered?
How would he have hidden the gold?
There was only one possibility.
Take down what was left of the wall, dig up the foundation stones, then throw them away to make room for the gold bars. Once set in the footings, Philo could rebuild the wall above them, mortar it all up and plaster it over. All he’d need was some mixing cement, a bag of crépi plaster powder and a wash of terracotta thin enough to dry in minutes, weathering back to the original colour in a matter of days. Out here on Pénitents, in the ruins of an old prison, no one would ever have noticed.
And all he and Eddie had to do when they wanted to make a withdrawal was to stay on after other visitors had headed back to their boats.
Until they were alone, and the island was theirs.
And to bring a hammer and chisel.
To help themselves to another brick.
Or two. Or three.
Whatever they needed.
Like a kind of bank.
That’s what they’d done with the gold, Jacquot was sure of it.
And he was going to find it.
Gripping the torch as firmly as he could, he started hammering away at the plastered brickwork.
Again and again and again, blow after blow, harder and harder, spraying dust and plaster chips with every hit.
Until, at last, a slab of brick and plaster broke away, clean down to the footings.
Jacquot stopped hammering, threw down the torch, and started sweeping away the chips of brick and stone and mortar. Then he sat back on his haunches, as though he’d been pushed over, and Delphie gasped.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered, hands going to her mouth, then getting down beside him.
She started laughing. ‘I – don’t – fucking – believe – it.’
112
‘WHAT WAS THAT?’ asked Didier, looking through the salon window towards the old prison.
‘Looked like a flash,’ said Léo, his hair slicked back, still wet from his swim. ‘Like they’re taking a photo.’
There was another flash, and another.
‘C’est certain. A camera flash,’ said Zach.
‘They’ve found it,’ whispered Didier. ‘They’ve got it.’
Kneeling between them on the sofa, the binoculars squeezed into his eyes, Zach worked the focus wheel, leaning his elbows on the back of the sofa to steady his grip.
‘It looks … it looks like she’s jumping,’ he told them. ‘Up and down. Or dancing, or something. And clapping her hands.’
‘They’ve definitely found it,’ said Didier, and started to chuckle.
Cassel came down from the bridge. ‘You see that?’ he asked. ‘The camera flash?’
‘We saw it,’ said Léo.
‘So what do you want to do, boss?’ asked Cassel, turning to Didier.
‘Exactly what we planned. And right now, before they start back for the beach. You all know what to do. Let’s do it.’
‘I’ll go tell Dhuc,’ said Léo, pushing away from the sofa and heading for the door that led forward to the cabins. ‘Zach, get the launch ready.’
Suddenly, after hours of silent observation, Corsaire came to life.
113
DEEP INSIDE HER, Claudine felt a movement. A fluttering, as fragile as the wings of a butterfly caught in cupped hands. The same gentle fluttering she’d felt that morning as they surged through the swell, she and Delphie down in the main cabin, hanging on for dear life. It hadn’t worried her then, that soft shifting sensation, as they laughed together at Captain Crazy leading them into a storm, just his legs visible, planted firm on the deck, bending and flexing to counter the swell. And it didn’t bother her now. It just made her smile. Because she knew what it was, remembered it from the time she was pregnant with Midou. One or both of her babies rearranging themselves. Making themselves more comfortable.
Claudine was in the for’ard cabin, lying on Delphie’s bed, both hatches and all six portholes open to catch the breeze and cool Constance’s interior, the cabin door and wheelhouse hatch similarly left open. She’d been sleeping when the movement came, but it was strong enough to wake her. Not so much a kick as a strange prodding sensation, from the inside. She imagined a little fist pushing against the walls of her womb, down there in the warm, watery, absolute darkness. And she smiled again, laid a soothing hand over her belly. She waited for another movement, wishing for it, but nothing came. She breathed deeply – long, steady even breaths to comfort them – then slowly, carefully, she sat up and swung her legs off the bed.<
br />
She wondered what time it was, how long she had slept. Long enough for a thin film of sweat to form on the back of her neck, for the pillow to feel damp. Bending forward she looked through into the main cabin until she could see the brass clock above the chart table. A few minutes after two in the afternoon. So they’d been gone a little over two hours … two hours since she’d waved at them on the beach and watched them follow the path up from the jetty, passing out of sight below the stony bluff that marked out the edge of the cove.
Getting to her feet, Claudine moved through into the main cabin. They’d be back soon, and whether or not they’d found the gold, she knew they’d be hungry and thirsty. She should start preparing a late lunch. And as she reached into the small fridge to see what she could knock together, she wondered if they had managed to find anything. If, indeed, there was any gold. Or had it all been wild speculation the night before? Just the three of them wanting it to be true, wanting to find gold. Only to be let down, disappointed. It really was too extraordinary to be possible. Fool’s gold, she thought to herself, and as she thought it she felt something bump against the hull, beyond the aft deck, and realised they must have come back. Winding the sarong around her waist, pushing back her hair, she turned to the companionway leading to the wheelhouse and started up.
She was about to call out, welcome them back, wondering if they came with good or bad news, when a head appeared over the transom and brought her up short. A man she had never seen before, climbing aboard, with a dark face, spiky black hair and slanting eyes. He wore a white sleeveless vest and blue shorts, his skin smooth and shiny and brown, the muscles of his legs and shoulders bunching as he hauled himself over the transom and hopped down on to the rear deck. He looked like a pirate boarding a ship with intent to do harm, the only thing missing a long silvery cutlass clenched between his teeth.
But if he didn’t have the cutlass, Claudine now saw that he carried a gun and when their eyes met and he saw her there, framed in the shadow of the wheelhouse hatch, he raised the gun, aimed it at her and put a finger to his smiling lips.
114
THERE WAS A jaunty spring in their steps as Jacquot and Delphie made their way back to the cove.
‘How many bars do you suppose there are?’ asked Delphie.
‘Apart from the ones we uncovered? You want there to be more?’
‘Of course I want more. Don’t you? So how many? Take a guess.’
Jacquot gave it some thought, saw again the second line of gold set down into the foundations of the wall.
‘Maybe another dozen or so,’ he said.
‘So what …? Twenty?’
‘Around there,’ replied Jacquot, and felt the swinging weight of just that one bar he’d brought with him for Claudine, swaddled in the grab-bag with the sun cream and the GPS handset and the rest of their stuff, jolting against his shoulder. A good twelve kilos. What must it have been like to shift so many of them? How had they managed it that long-ago night?
Delphie was silent for a moment. And then, ‘Do you think they’d miss a couple? I mean, one for you and Claudine, one for me and the old man? They’d never know. How could they? I mean, if we wanted to we could keep the lot.’
Jacquot smiled. He’d had the same thought, of course. It was only natural. They’d found the gold. Maybe twenty bars. Two hundred and fifty kilos, give or take. Somewhere over twelve million francs, he estimated. And no one knew about it. Gold that had been lost, written off, more than twenty years ago. The temptation was enormous, and mesmerising.
‘It’s funny you should say that. I was thinking just the same thing,’ he admitted.
‘You were?’ Delphie glanced up at him. ‘Really? A couple of bars? Or, I don’t know … Maybe a few more? You think we should? I mean, could we get away with it?’
‘Ah,’ said Jacquot as they dropped down past the shelf of stone and the cove revealed itself, the two yachts and the launch long gone, just Constance moored quietly in the bay. ‘Now there’s a question. Would we get away with it?’
‘Your friend, Philo, did. And Eddie.’
‘Yes, they did,’ said Jacquot, coming off the path and feeling the shingle of the beach give beneath his feet. ‘They took a gamble and it paid off. More than twenty years living off the proceeds. And living well. The big house, the travel. But could you take a gamble like that? Could you risk everything? Your family? Your job? Your freedom?’
Delphie fell silent. ‘It’s just a dream, isn’t it?’
‘I think that’s exactly what it is,’ said Jacquot, as they waded out into the water. ‘For people like us.’
‘If I just had the nerve,’ said Delphie, getting out of her depth and starting to swim. ‘But inside, in my heart of hearts, I know I couldn’t do it. It’s just … thinking about it, you know? The possibility. The gold, there for the taking. And no one would know.’
Her words rang a little bell in Jacquot’s head.
He’d heard them before, but he shook away the memory.
‘It’ll make a great story,’ he said.
‘Front page. No doubt about that,’ said Delphie, with a whoop of glee. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Call it in,’ said Jacquot. ‘Report the find.’
‘Spoilsport,’ she said, swimming on ahead.
Beneath his feet the shingle fell away and Jacquot lunged after her, kicking out with his legs, reaching through the water with his arms, long, powerful strokes, feeling the weight of the grab-bag on his back and shoulders. He was glad he didn’t have too far to swim.
Delphie was first to reach Constance, pulling herself up the steps, then leaning back down to take the bag from him, heaving it aboard and dropping it with a heavy clunk on to the aft deck.
‘We’re back, Claudie,’ Jacquot heard her call out. ‘And we’ve brought you a little present.’
With the weight off his shoulders, Jacquot hoisted himself aboard, water streaming off him.
And there was Delphie, standing just in front of him.
And there, coming up out of the main cabin, stepping into the wheelhouse, was Claudine.
But there was something wrong.
Her face was ashen, her eyes wide, and she had no words to greet them with.
And then he saw why.
There was someone coming up behind her.
A man. Tall, dark, in a crisp pale blue polo-shirt and perfectly-creased shorts.
‘Welcome aboard,’ the stranger said.
And with a dangerous smile he levelled a gun at them.
115
IF THIS JACQUOT was a cop, wondered René Duclos, was he straight or bent? If he was straight and he knew the gold was there, the place should’ve been crawling with flics. But it wasn’t.
So, the obvious conclusion? He was bent. As bent as any other flic that Duclos had ever dealt with. Out for himself. Hand in the till. No surprises there, then.
Duclos was sitting at a glass-topped wicker-framed dining table on Désiré’s aft deck, sheltered from the sun by the flying bridge. He had taken a light lunch – a selection of cold meats, buttered new potatoes, a baby leaf salad, a bottle of gris de gris Provençal rosé – and was busy scraping the last of a peach crème brûlée from its copper dish. For the last two hours Hamid had taken Désiré back and forth along the coast, no more than a hundred metres from the mainland cliffs, and in the main salon Duclos could see Aris, Beni and Jo-Jo keeping watch on Corsaire, switching sides every time Désiré turned about, at least one pair of binoculars focussed on Île des Pénitents at any one time.
As Duclos pushed aside the cleaned copper dish, Aris opened the sliding salon doors and stepped out on to the deck. He came to the table but he did not take a seat.
‘They’re back aboard Constance. The cop and the woman.’
‘And Didier’s introduced himself?’ asked Duclos, taking his napkin from his lap.
‘They’re all there. Didier, a couple of his boys, the cop and the two women.’
Duclos put down the
napkin and turned towards Pénitents, shading his eyes. They were too far away for him to make out any detail, but he sensed the time had come. Things were starting to move.
‘Have Hamid bring us in. From the east. Like we’re coming in to moor. Just visitors. Oh, and have Beni tool up the crew. Just in case we need them.’
116
‘SO WHAT HAVE we here?’ asked Didier, settling into the skipper’s chair and pointing his gun at the grab-bag. He looked at Delphie, and then at Jacquot, both of them still standing where they’d clambered aboard, both too stunned to speak. ‘Well? Lost our tongues, have we?’
Jacquot might not have been speaking, but his mind was racing. He knew a bad boy when he saw one, and this one looked the part down to his neatly laced tennis shoes and long socks. The complacency, the confidence, the polished turn-out, a gun in his hand, a neat little walkie-talkie holstered on his pleated Gucci belt. But who was he? And where had he come from? And how did he know about the gold? About Île des Pénitents? The questions rattled through his head like machine gun fire. But none of them settled.
Jacquot looked around for a boat tied up alongside, but there was nothing, only the wedding-cake cruiser a few hundred metres away. He must have been brought over by launch and just come aboard. On to his boat. Constance. Without so much as a by-your-leave. Jacquot bristled, but there was nothing he could do about it. Right then, his overriding concern was Claudine, whose arm the stranger held so lightly, almost affectionately. How exactly was he going to get that gun out of the man’s hand?
Then the man turned his head and called out: ‘Dhuc, Léo. Come on up and meet my new friends.’
If Jacquot had had any doubts about the stranger’s gangland bona fides, just a glance at the two men coming up from below would have dispelled them. The first was Asian – Chinese? Vietnamese? Cambodian? Jacquot couldn’t tell which. All he could say with any certainty was that the man was dangerous. Lithe and tough-looking. Nothing he wouldn’t do, if his boss wanted something. And Polo-Shirt was clearly the boss. The second man up, Léo, was no different. Taller than the one called Dhuc, but just as deadly. Cold black eyes. Lean and mean. The man who’d hit Clem, who’d put her down and left her for dead. And both men carried guns. Automatics. Berettas by the look of them. Hammers cocked. And in that instant Jacquot knew that the odds had trebled against him. One man was possible. Three was another matter. Jacquot just hoped they kept their fingers off the triggers.
The Dying Minutes Page 36